The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-08-09
DEATHS ON THE STAGE.
HOW ACTORS IMPERSONATE LIES
LAST SCENE.


Death Scenes-Forrest, Salvini, Mac
cready, Lucille Western and Others.
From the Ne,c York Stor
The stimulation of death upon the stage
has always been an interesting study for
the players, and a subject of more or
less learned comment on the part of writ
eIs.
All theatre goers recall the effect which
certain actors have produced upon them
when they have pretended to shuttle off
this mortal COLI upon the boards. Some
have, indeed, been so powerful in this that
the effect has been somewhat maTed by too
great realism, because, although the act
or's art teaches him to hold, as it were, the
mirror up to nature, we all prefer to expert
ence a sense of unreality mingled with our
admiration when death is depicted in a
play.
Forrest, that great and vigorous actor,
imbued with a direct and unmstakable pur
pose in his acting, died with very much of
the very same virile power that he lived.
Who that ever saw him can forget his
last fierce look which he cast upon the con
spiratOrs who "did to the death" the noble
! "CoriOlnnuS.' It's power was such that
it was 10 uncommon thing TO see the actors
around him in that scene draw back in
voluntarily from that dangerous, vengeful
look
Macready, when he gave up life as Leah, -"
was marveOusly effective and his last
words to "Cordelia' were mastery in their
tender patEos. Gustavus Brooks, although
seen here when much of his great power
was somewhat weakened, knew how to die
upon the stage 50 well that old theatre fire.
quenters speak of it with "bated breath"
and shake their gray locks when his name
is mentioned.
We all know how Salvini affects us when,
as ''Othello,n he compasseS his own death,
and many Will recall with wonder the extra
ordinary and electrical effect which Rossi
produced when, as Hamlet he rushed up
on ''Claudius," stabbed him, and in doing so
fell, as it We're, into the very throne of Den
mark, dying to all appearance its rightfnl
king
Those who are old enough will remember
the death scene of the great Rachel when
she played "Adrienne Lecouvreur" at the
Metropolitan Theatre more than score of
years ago. The low, unearthly cry with
which she drew back her head after inhal-
ing the deadly fumes of the poisoned bou
quet will once more linger in their eaBs, and
they will again see the writing torture OF
the poor creature ere she gave her final
gasp. 1t was said at the time that she had
studied all this by the bedsides of dying
people in the Hotel Dieu, the Paris hospital.
1t is more natural to imagine that the
same woman, who at that time showed us
"Phedre'sn quiet death agony, trusted to
that intense nervous feeling she was
so highly charged with, rather than to
mere imitation, even of the dreadful re-
atty
Charlotte Cushmans death, in Meg Mer-
rifles, will not easily be forgotten, exhibit
ing, as it did gentle human kindness through
ness of old age
| Little Picolomini, who was here many
years ago used to die in La Traviata with
"a rare power of tenderness expressed more
by few simple gestures than by words.
She seemed at the last supreme moment to
be lifted from the grossness of her life and
to become ethereaiized in her last low-voiced
breathing out of lite How Clara Morris
can die as Camille" the prose original of
La Traviata we all know; and its effect up
J on a weeping audience never becomes weak
ened. In Miss Mutton, she perhaps excels
her own Camille" joined as her death
scene is to that rhythmic, excited iteration of
her own sentences, which seem to haunt her
brain as it becomes gradually stilled and
finally lifcleSs.
Kate Bateman died in Leah, when she was
allowed to do so, with wonderful tenderness,
which was greatly enhanced 10y the memory
OF that hard, cruel curse she had launched
dJ uGT nNeTS uettl III IL previous dcu. I1eT
father, Nj. Bateman, never finally decided
whether Leah should or should not die.
Sometimes she gave up the ghost at the end
of the play, but more frequently she was
left Respondent yet alive. When Ristori
played Deborah, the same play, she always
died, and it was great expire ssion of tragic
power But Ristori's death scenes were al
ways great, always effective.
Charles Kean and Irving as Louis XII, y
show us the same train of thought and pro
duce the same results. The miserable King,
with his cruelty, hypocrisy, religion and
cowardice, seems always lowering between
earth and hell and when he dies the body
which lies before us is so materially horrible
that no thought of anything spiritual seems
possible When Irving goes out from this
world as Matthias in The Bells the pity
! and forgiveness OF whole audience follow
him, and very much the same feeling, min
gled with good deal of rage in a strange
spirit of contradiction attach to his death
scenes in The Lyons Mail.
Fechter could die, as he could act, with
more romantic interest than any man ON the
stage He posed SO well i'll life that in death
he remained picture. One of the most
terrible deaths he INDUCED in was that of
Robert Macaire' in the Roadside Inn,
when he literally fell, in humping success
sion, down whole flight of stairs after be-
ing shot, TO tumble in the centre of the stage
He had only line to say thereafter and one
to the brigader: "Your duty is TO take me
up; you'll find me-rather heavy" He was
q corpse.
. Boucicault has seldom died upon the stage;
at least do not recall any plays in which
he has been required to give up the ghost,
except in that hideous nightmare drama of
his called The Vampire and in the blood
curdling Jessie Brown, wherein he played
; the Indian fiend, Mana s5ahib.n In these
death had been anticipated from the first
act by the bloodess hro Che measured pac-
ing and the duh Stiffness of the acting, so
!, that he seemed more to make his exits at the
last than to die
When f. l.. Davenport, as ''Sir Giles
! Overreach," was stricken with death in the
last scene although he did not die within
sight of the audience, the effect was Just as
powerful He had the awful, deathlike
look of one in n final convusive fit, and as
his paralyzcd limbs We're dragged of the
; scene the staring glazed eyes were the last
and best remembered evidences of the act
or's art. James Wallack, Jr., always u
great actor, showed a death scene in Henry
Dunbar, that will not soon be equailed, and
it was evident that this death would be re-
markable from the moment he entered the
, scene in the first act, with his palo face, his
nervously twitchng hands and the fright
, ened look Of his eyes. II he had died upon
the stage as "FaGin he could not have in